A $5 Billion Fine for Facebook

Facebook are to pay a record $5 billion fine to settle privacy concerns. 

Five billion may sound like a big number. But really, a $5 billion fine won’t change anything at Facebook. After all, Facebook is a very big company. 

The Federal Trade Commission’s announcement on Wednesday is a slap on the wrist. Critics have pointed out that the money is mere pocket change for a firm of Facebook’s mega-size. 

The penalty Facebook will pay is more than 200 times the size of the next-largest fine that the FTC has ever levied against a technology company. This $5 billion settlement dwarfs the FTC’s largest penalty to date, formerly held by the $22.5 million settlement reached with Google in 2012.

You may not know this but the social media behemoth brought in more than $55 billion in revenue last year – which helps explain why investors celebrated initial reports of the settlement by sending Facebook’s stock soaring!

What this means is that Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg (right), who owns most of Facebook’s shareholder voting rights, actually made money the day the news broke.

Unfortunately, the FTC’s remedies beyond money mostly amount to more paperwork for Facebook to fill out as it continues to suck up users’ information for the lucrative targeted advertising business that allows it to shrug off massive fines in the first place. 

Facebook henceforth will have to document how it will handle data every time it develops a product, as well as more strictly monitor what third parties do with user information. The government also will have access to an outside organization’s audits of Facebook’s practices, along with the company’s own certifications, signed by Zuckerberg, that it is on good behavior. 

Still, explicit restrictions on Facebook’s data collection and processing only cover certain malpractices from the past, such as gathering phone numbers for security and re-purposing them for advertising, or sneakily applying facial-recognition technology. Broader limits on using information ostensibly gathered for one reason for another altogether, or combining data from across the Web to create profiles for targeted advertising, aren’t part of the agreement. The agency also let Facebook off the hook for transgressions known or unknown that it has already committed. 

Methinks, Zuckerberg should be held personally accountable. Otherwise, the $5 billion fine are not going to stop Facebook, not a chance.

Celtic hammered Nomme Kalju 5-0 in the first leg of their Champions League second qualifying round tie on Wednesday. 

Kristoffer Ajer (36), Ryan Christie (44, penalty) and Leigh Griffiths (45+3) had put the Scots 3-0 up and (again) Christie (65) and Callum McGregor (77) completed the scoring after the break to render next week's return leg in Estonia effectively moot.